Is it necessary to protect your gadgets with password?

Are you really conscious about data security? If you are, then you must have locked your gadgets with pretty strong password.

Every day, we see new gadgets with new technology in the market and we all love to have one. But unfortunately, these shiny gadgets also attract burglars, muggers and pickpockets. Thieves are generally looking to offload your gadgets for some quick cash, but the data they contain may be of far more value to you.

Typing in a password every time you want to use your gadgets is a hassle, but leaving them unlocked is clearly a risk. Our smartphones in particular are our gateway to the world and for the sake of convenience we tend to fill them with sensitive data and stay logged into a range of services. Often it’s a mix of personal and corporate data.

If someone stole your notebook, phone or tablet right now, what would they have access to? Are your gadgets locked down with a password, or would a thief have access to your contacts, calendar, email and social networking along with other services and sensitive data? What sort of havoc could they cause, especially if they’ve access to your calendar and know when you’ll be away from home or the office? How difficult would it be to regain control of your digital identity? What kinds of problems would it cause at work if corporate data fell into the wrong hands?

Now imagine if your gadgets went missing at a business conference rather than on the street. What would happen if an unscrupulous competitor got their hands on your phone or notebook?

While you’re thinking about the security of your mobile devices, it’s worth sparing a thought for the tech that sits around your house or office. What havoc could thieves cause if they grabbed the tablet on your coffee table, the computer on your desk and the USB or network storage drive on the shelf? Is this data locked down? Do you log out of everything? Do you have a backup of irreplaceable files such as family photos and business records?

Worrying about data security might seem overly paranoid when you consider most thieves are probably not that tech-savvy, but that will change over time. You don’t need to know much about technology to twig that the data on your devices is incredibly valuable, at least to you. A few years ago we saw a spate of trojans which encrypted your hard drive and held it to ransom. How long before someone realises that there’s money to be made in holding your gadgets to ransom?

Comments

Hi there, thanks for sharing this good information about protecting our gadget with password. even tough it is annoying sometimes because we keep on unlocking our smart phones with password. we are sure that our privacy is safe, even the theft can’t handle this and might throw them away cause they can’t use it.